The Isle

Like an enraged wind of the tempest she resides in, she has blown all away. Isolated, they lay in her wake, sinking in the sea, reborn from the sanded floor. She stands alone—an isle. Her shores are silent and still, have been so for quite a while, ever since they stopped arriving. But one lonely sailor wanders aimlessly, lost and disconcerted, with no desire to escape.

Projected Lives

Projection is usually a misstep—an assumption too far from reality that we are chastened to avoid. In this collaboration between siblings, we embrace projection to see a fleeting sense of a life. The person constructed between the drawing and poem is thus burdened—those poor models!—with an imagined, hybrid life.

Needful Thing

We slather the paint a hair thick, let the snowstorm in for air and fall on the bed where I lodge a condom under its leg. I can see none of it —where your mother’s bedpans hid, hair spilled and blood seeped from diapers, which knife in the drawer you clutched as haulers ran too late and you cut the bed into reeking squares, sundered as milkweed silk. The sheets are fresh and old, and our bodies we count on —the nape, the sacrum to unlock just enough-- for what? Give us death in digestible stories, give us the real that clears away our bodies and reveals what is behind them, but give us now our bodies.

The Lonesome Death of Crow Fallon

My name is Paul Fallon. I am thirty-eight years old, I live on the West Side of Manhattan, and I am going to die today.I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s what you’re wondering. Nor do I have any kind of terminal disease. I simply woke up this morning and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I would not outlast the day.You ever see that movie The Roaring Twenties? It was a gangster film, one of the Cagney-Bogart team-ups. At the end, Cagney gets shot on the steps of City Hall, and a cop asks his girlfriend who he was, and she just says, “He used to be a big shot.” That’s me. I used to be a big shot. I was never a boss or anything; I’m not good with administrative shit. But over the years, I was really good at whacking people or intimidating them to the point that whacking them wasn’t necessary.Everyone around here calls me Crow Fallon, since I was about seventeen. Once people started calling me Crow, a black guy who ran numbers down on Belmont Avenue who was called Crow got pissed; guy drove up to our headquarters on 43rd Street and told me it was his, I couldn’t use it. We sat down and talked for a little while, and he ended up giving me permission to use the name, provided I always referred to myself as “Crow Fallon," never just “Crow." The two of us have been friends ever since. That still makes me laugh. A couple of gangsters, sitting down to hash out copyright.Crow-from-Belmont was curious what a white boy wanted to call himself “Crow” for in the first place, and I’m sure lots of other people had the same question. Short answer: it’s because of my hair, which is so jet-black that everyone assumes it’s a dye-job. My ancestors in Ireland always went gray when they were a hell of a lot younger than I am now (poverty, drunkenness and terrorism will age you pretty fast), so I was always kind of proud that not only did I never go gray, I derived my handle from never going gray.As I comb this mane of mine, I think about how I’ll spend my day. I decide to pull a Godfather; today, I settle all family business. Well, not “family," really. But regardless, I make my peace with the many, many people whose shit list I’m on. Of course, some of them will probably shoot me on sight. But hey, it’s gonna happen at some point today. No sense putting it off. I decide that for my hokey, cliché day I oughtta dress in a hokey, cliché manner; I look in my closet and see my suit; it’s a beautiful thing, black silk, double-breasted. It still fits perfectly, even though I got it back when I was working as a bagman at eighteen. I figured this was the way an up-and-coming gangster should dress, so it was what I got on my first payday. This turned out to be my own dumbfuckery, and I ate microwave burritos for all three meals the next few weeks. Lesson learned: Even a gangster needs to make a paycheck last.

Choices Matter

9:10 AM and here I am At a desk of wood in a class of stone The board is black and walls are white Dark red purple vomit colored carpet Designed to hide unwanted stains Yellow wire still hanging Dangling near fluorescent lights Humming under the drumming ventilation Then there’s me

A Perfect Day

“Echo, do you copy? Echo, do you copy?” I slowly open my eyes and stir in place. I still can't get used to sleeping in a chair, but I need to stay near the radio. I slowly move my hand and press the respond button. “Mission control, this is Echo. Copy,” I say, my voice weak. I haven't done a lot of talking lately. “Echo, we have found your shuttle. Rescue will be there momentarily. Just remain where you are and wait for further instructions.” “Roger that,” I respond. Just like that, it's silent again. I guess I should be used to the silence at this point. There was that old movie tagline about how no one can hear you scream in space. I never realized how true that was until I came out on this mission. I still heard screams, though, so I don't think it's entirely accurate. If they're finally coming to rescue me, I guess I should enjoy the view one last time. I've been looking at this view for the last few weeks, in between periods of crying and lamenting my situation. It's...pretty nice. For the most part.

(Spill-O Started Out)

He started out toward the blue, Looking for the light. But Spill-O didn’t go straight, He took a left and a right. Now he’s out in the streets, Dressed like a slob. Crying out that the fall of man Was an inside job. He started out running, Then he started to plod. He overheard you sighing, “There but for the grace of god.” Spill-O kept nice and quiet; Stuck to the world’s diet. His shoes were leather, or so he’s told. His jacket didn’t help against the cold. He started out playing hooky, But ended up an exile. Spill-O rent the veil and scorched the earth, Just to see you smile. All the while, he was looking For his big opportunity To be human, With impunity.

The Makematcher

He knew this and this alone was being in love and being an adult, did Zak;—that all the rest of it was desperate self-hypnosis—walking uptown along the avenue, and the other thought, and knew, that she was only a few paces abaft them,—who walked before her, yet somehow she still saw them—the two good friends, side by side and she, either on her phone with who must have been her good friend Becca, or must have been one of sundry casual acquaintances—her friends, the friends in his, in her boyfriend Philip's, life—but soon would the grasp of that intelligence of his weaken; and by what, but an increase in that distance—being, between the two old friends, Zak and Philip, side by side, as you now know; and, who was mate of the latter,—that distance increasing and, with it, that, her mate's, Philip's, doubt, because only a few feet closer and it would have been more likely—close enough to absolutely logically tenable to be thought probable,—that she was talking to Becca, who was her good friend, and no one besides. But Zak could not be made aware of the tenuousness of that, Philip's, trust; from which musn't be extrapolated anything like a general lack of trust, as this was more the trust that one has in one's perceptions of what is possible, what probable; very likely—actual. Were he proved wrong, in either assertion, would Philip only find himself incrementally drawn nearer to the crushing revelation: that he stood in further small increments removed from another crushing revelation of illimitable crushing revelations like. And to then fathom, for Philip, the anxious terror that would be, to know that the barb of that anxiety would only pierce and not transpierce; that he might arrive at the end of a close and dark passageway to find an endless dark open space—these were not to be fathomed, well, especially on a weekend out, in the city, with her, and with Zak his good friend along as well. But are we being followed? “Sure, I've had my dalliances...” “Dalliances.” “...Had my mistresses...” “Mistresses.” “...Oh, Zachary, I'll tell you, it was quite quaint! You see, we were apart for one week, she and I—” Philip's friend checked again, surely she wasn't; but yes, still visible and yet growing smaller, still on the phone,—having been free in her time and distance to terminate the first call and commence another illicit; or perhaps affect to terminate what was never a call at all illicit or elsewise—“Yet it is so that I find the...Connubial bliss...” “Connubial bliss.” “...That we share, far more rewarding than any...”—At the bar, and of course she was still on the phone, without the bar, on the same call with Becca her closest friend, she must be—closest and least willing, she must, to be party to any deception enormous or less so—still talking to someone someplace so she couldn't come in phones never work in bars anyway—But are we alone..?